“ ‘About 5,000 Russian prisoners of war were exterminated by the Germans in the winter of 1942 by the following method: They were taken from their barracks in trucks and driven to the pits of a former stone quarry, and in these pits they were shot.’
“Prisoners of war of the former Polish Army, captured as far back as 1939 and imprisoned in various German camps, were already concentrated, in 1940, in the Lublin camp on Lipovoja Street and were soon after transferred, in batches, to the extermination camp of Maidanek, where they suffered the same fate: systematic torture, murder, mass shooting, et cetera.
“The witness, Reznik, testified as follows:
“ ‘In January 1941, we, a party of approximately 4,000 Jewish prisoners of war, were placed into railway coaches and sent to the East. . . . We were brought to Lublin, unloaded and handed over to the SS. About September or October 1942, it was decided that only those people who were qualified as skilled plant and factory workers, and therefore needed in the town, were to be left in the camp on Number 7 Lipovoja Street, while the rest, and I among them, were transferred to Maidanek Camp. All of us already knew—and knew far too well—that deportation to Maidanek meant death. Of this party of more than 4,000 prisoners of war, only a few individuals, who had managed to escape while engaged in work outside the camp, remained alive.
“ ‘In the summer of 1943, 300 Soviet officers, including two colonels, four majors, with the remainder consisting of captains and senior lieutenants, were brought to Maidanek. The officers in question were shot in the camp.’ ”
Huge camps for the extermination of Soviet prisoners of war had been organized by German fascists in the territory of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. The report of the Extraordinary State Commission for the investigation of atrocities committed by the German invaders on the territory of this republic—we present to the Tribunal this report as Exhibit Number USSR-41 (Document Number USSR-41)—contains the following data on the extermination of 327,000 Soviet prisoners of war. I quote excerpts from Page 7, on the right column of the above-mentioned report. You, Sir, as well as the other members of the Tribunal, will find the excerpt on Page 97 of the document book:
“In Riga, the Germans organized a camp, Stalag 350, for Soviet prisoners of war, on the premises of the former barracks on Pernovskaja and Rudolf Streets, which existed from July 1941 to October 1944. There Soviet prisoners of war were kept in inhuman conditions. The building where they were lodged had neither windows nor heat. In spite of heavy forced labor from 12 to 14 hours a day, their rations consisted only of 150-200 grams of bread and so-called soup made of grass, rotten potatoes, leaves of trees, and other refuse.”
In my opinion, it is necessary to stress the monotony of the rations issued to the prisoners of war. Testimonies given by witnesses coincide entirely with the official directive on the quantities of food allotted to the prisoners of war, which I have already read into the Record today.
A former prisoner of war, P. F. Yakovenko, who was imprisoned in Stalag 350, testified—this is on Page 97 in your document book; forgive me, I forgot to mention it:
“We were given 180 grams of bread, half consisting of sawdust and straw, one liter of unsalted soup made of unpeeled rotten potatoes. We slept on the bare ground and were eaten up by lice. Between December 1941 to May 1942, 30,000 prisoners of war perished in this camp from starvation, cold, flogging, typhus, and shooting. The Germans daily shot prisoners of war who, owing to weakness or illness, were unable to go to work; they mocked at them and beat them without any reason at all.”